Stressful call to Telstra faults

I have never had the misfortune of such a stressful call to Telstra faults before in my life.

It started when the neighbour rang David's mobile saying they couldn't ring in on the landline. We checked it with David's mobile ringing home and it just cut out to static. So I called faults to see if they had any answers.

After going through the layers of number pressing for options, the phone finally rings to talk to a human being. Then I get the call centre in another country with a person I have trouble understanding. I thought to myself "here we fuckin go...."

She goes through all the stuff she's supposed to say like "I'm sorry you're having trouble with your phone" which was very nice but so fake, just a recitation. Just go ahead and call the Telstra bloke to come out and look at the wires out on the street.

Then she asks how many things are plugged into the landline. That being a modem, the standard phone with no batteries, and two cordless phones. There's the questions about maybe they are too much for the one line. I assure her that I've had this setup for years without the slightest problem.

Then she wants to run a line test. Great, we're finally getting somewhere I thought. Then she said the standard phone needs to be plugged in to the phone socket on it's own and everything else unplugged. WTF? There's been tests done in the line before here and they've not wanted that. 

So we're going around unplugging the modem and wireless phones, then have to drag furniture out of the way to get to the wall outlet behind it all, and take the phone from the PC desk and plug it in there. Lights falling over, saying fuck a lot, groping around on the floor under a small table messing with plugs. 

All this time the mobile they've rung me on whilst testing the line is periodically cutting out as it's prone to do here at home - it's Telstra pre-paid BTW. She has to keep ringing back when that happens.

Finally she announces that yes there is in fact a fault on the line. Eureka! No shit Sherlock! She arranges for a Testra bloke to come out in the next couple of days to fix it, most likely a fault on the street wiring outside. Phew! Finally success!